A small part of Inyanga Numbia didn't want to go to visit the Univasiti campus with her primary class. Not only would she drag her feet on her way to the field trip, she started early — dragging her feet on her walk to Ato Primary with Amafu that morning.

Not that Amafu paid any mind to the snail's pace Inyanga was setting, because she was too busy talking at a speedy hare's pace.

"And the library at al-Maysan hall is null gravity, so there's no choice but to fly if you want a book from there! Bet I'll be good at flying, Maestra Alma says I'm a strong enough swimmer I would be on the team if our scuola had one. Which of course it doesn't. And the first spell you learn is how to make things levitate, because there's always high demand for architectural levitation, vehicle levitation, small business levitation, and all kinds of levitation!"

As the two city girls walked themselves down Virgo Street to school, many of the red brick buildings five or six storeys high were augmented with multi-storey floating add-ons — glass skyscraper towers that looked like they could fall or scatter down on the pavement any minute.

"Wish our primary levitated. The view up high every day while we're studying — that would be the life. I'd sit in the window every day and I guess I would never get any work done because I would be too busy looking out at the whole world out there! Up from above like a goddess." She fluttered her eyelashes and kept skipping sideways. "Can you imagine being the spellcaster who put the buildings up in the sky? Casting the spells to make them float?"

Inyanga couldn't. Primary worked them hard, taught lessons all day so they needed to study all night, but in all her learning Inyanga had never come across even the first clue as to what the first step would be to levitating a tower. Maybe it was something you couldn't know until you held a magic gnomon in your hand, felt the connection to magic in your body, launched off the first spell, and thinking about it made her belly and eyes twinge, she wanted a first hint of magic so bad.

Block after block Amafu skipped down the street as motos raced, some with wheels rolling firmly down the street, and others gliding in silence like a flock of birds, a murmuration of starlings or a siege of cranes, overhead. One would think Amafu's speed and energy would get them to scuola faster, but she did circles around Inyanga that drew out the distance.

"I can't wait for both of us to have piles of homework at magician's college." They always talked like that, like they were both going to become licensed magicians.

Today Inyanga kicked dust and said, "You hate homework."

"I won't hate it when it's magic homework!" Amafu's eyes went so wide and round that it seemed at least some of her enthusiasm had to be an act she put on. Digging her heels in, Inyanga wanted to say it, say out loud that no way could both of them get in.

It was a fantasy to live by for thirteen years of primary, but today it was getting close to the time when perhaps it might be wisest to prepare their expectations. Before she could get out the first sound of the first word, Amafu yelled, "Race you! It's magic scavenge day, let's go!" and began to skip the last block in earnest.

To run, to skip, or to drag her heels? That was the question. The campus trip couldn't be put off forever — she broke into a reluctant jog and found as the cool breeze coming down the avenue lifted her into a run that a grin was spreading like a favorite blanket across her face in spite of herself.

Inyanga had never wanted anything more than to be a magician. That's why even as she had dragged her feet to school the morning of the field trip, the greater part of her was dying to go. She was dying to see the students pulling gnomon wands on each other, pulling strings on each other's minds, playing tricks to soothe and inflame each other's moods and emotions, soaring through the library windows — not to mention teleporting from spot to spot.

It surprised her when she couldn't sleep the night before, and even more when she woke up in the gray so long before morning, a pit in her stomach when she should be asleep, and she was supposed to be excited, but instead there was a misery living in her belly. She had rubbed her eyes, groaned, and rolled back over, but she never got another wink.

It had startled everyone when the tears had started to come, pouring toward the cereal just as the milk had. "What, tears?" said umama. "I thought you were waiting your whole life to go to magicians' college. Though it's not as if you've never been.

"When you and Amafu were children, you girls used to go to the campus and beg the students to levitate you into the floralwoods a mile up, and you would have broken your neck, and I wish you had."

Grandmama Amandla had screamed when Inyanga's mother said that. "What?" said umama. "They would have healed her with a spell, and we could sue the school for negligence."

She shrugged innocently.

The eternal youth spells that made Grandmama and umama look hardly older than Inyanga seemed to encase them in a youthful joy and immaturity; it wasn't just their skins that stayed smooth and young, their minds remained a little childish too — in a good way, Inyanga thought, and she often wondered if that's what she could be like at four hundred years old.

When they got to school, Inyanga took her first effort at tempering Amafu's expectations. "They say the school doesn't take more than one student from Ato. What if Sahan beats both of us?"

In a switch of roles, now Amafu was the one acting all optimistic. She smiled with her mouth and her eyes too, beaming, and said, "Then perhaps Constellation Univasiti will take all three of us! Three students from Ato."

"Never going to happen," said Iwu, walking past.

The Univasiti Campus transcended the sky like a glimmering lake, and the whole graduating class of Inyanga's primary streamed across its blue lawns racing.

The two friends did not run over the grass toward the levitating lecture halls, some of them spherical and others glass skyscrapers that would start and stop again dozens of storeys from the ground, then pausing to let some azure sky through, and a whole extra building arrested in mid-air as if falling from the sky and caught just in time before it would crash into the ground.

Sometimes when Inyanga looked at those buildings she would imagine the collision, ground exploding from the impact, earth in chunks propelling upwards in every direction and dozens of storeys demolishing as if they were no more than a model made of putty that a hand had smacked down flat.

Kids who ran past said, "The library inside al-Maysan is zero gravity, right?"

"That's true, you don't even need a spell to fly in there."

The thought alone made Inyanga's heart hurt, she wanted it so bad. Would they be allowed today? Was it for students only? Never had she wanted anything so badly as to fly through shelves of books.

Starting to daydream in the meditative stride, she was interrupted from the bittersweat fantasy by Amafu, who was clearing her throat. Then she went quiet and kept walking as if she hadn't done it.

"You going to say something?" said Inyanga.

"Oh, um," said Amafu, as if caught in the act. "I do have some news." Now she avoided Inyanga's eyes, walking with her head held straight ahead. So many beats passed that Inyanga didn't think her friend was going to tell her any news after all, as stride after stride brought them closer to the lecture halls. Then Amafu shook her black coils and laughed as if to shake off her reservations, laugh them away, as if humoring them would make them go away magically, and she said, "My sister's having a baby."

Just like that, out of nowhere. Last thing Inyanga expected her to say, so she stopped and straight up halted a second, and said, "Woah, woah! Is that true? I don't know what to say! Congratulations?"

A little worry came through, and Amafu caught it, along with all that went unsaid, because she answered, "Don't worry, it's a starborn, in vivo fertilization, animus paid up in full," and Inyanga's breath returned before she realized she had been holding it. Before she realized she had been picturing Amafu's sister Ifu losing her immortal life, passing it to her child. Growing old, becoming mortal, and passing her animus to the little girl. "Her" wasn't right, though — she caught herself, because now that Ifu was going to be a mama, the correct pronoun would be "aeh/aer," which meant Ifu wouldn't be giving up aer life to fuel the eternal life of the child aeh was about to bring into the world. It would take some getting used to — thinking of Ifu as an aeh/aer. As a parens and not a girl.

That Amafu even had a sister never ceased to stretch belief, because what family could afford the monthly bills for not one, but two immortalities? Yet Star, the umama of Amafu, is still with us, thank the stars — and so is Amafu, and Ifu, and now Ifu's having a starborn. It was mind-blowing. Their family must be so wealthy. Inyanga's umama had wanted another baby forever, but they didn't have a single magician in the family to foot the bill for a second child's animus and the month to month eternal life spells. Yet.

Amafu knew full well that if Inyanga went to magician's college, she'd be on her way to helping Umama have her second starborn. A little sister.

Inyanga had a secret, too. One she was working up to tell Amafu. That was why she hadn't been excited about the visit to the campus. Yesterday morning, at breakfast, she got her letter. She had been accepted to Constellation University.

To be continued . . . one day earlier!

What do you think of these new early chapters? Thanks, everyone, for all of your continued support. It always keeps me going! Be well and stay safe.